tomspielman

You've probably heard of Bitcoin. It relies on blockchain technology.

Well, you could get a medium format camera that's also a rangefinder. Fujica made a variety of them. Some with interchangeable lenses and some affectionately referred to as "Texas Leicas". Fujica is not the only company to make them, there's a ton of medium format folders with rangefinders. I do agree that you might want to pick up a cheaper rangefinder to see if you like that method of focusing. I did not at first but eventually got the hang of it. Now I have a mild preference for it.

Art Shanty Village on Lake Harriet, Minneapolis

I really wanted to comply with the moderators request to get the discussion back to photography but I do have to respond to this one because it is central to the point I was trying to make. Then I'm done with this topic, - honest. ;) Yes, the problems that came as a result of the Y2K bug were relatively local and minor. But that was because companies and governments took the issue seriously, spent the money, updated the affected software and replaced old hardware. And guess what? - putting the resources into fixing it didn't send the economy into a tailspin. The economy was booming at the time. The tech industry employed a lot of people. I was right smack dab in the middle of it, I spent a couple of years running up to it making sure that my organization would be OK. Was there some unnecessary hysteria? Absolutely. As there is with global warming. That does not mean there isn't a genuine problem with potentially serious consequences.

Yes, I also have a BS degree and I'm smart enough to know that it doesn't qualify to make my own claims about Climate Science any more than a degree in Chemical Engineering does. Maybe if I it called a "Baccalaureate", it would sound more impressive and make my opinion more authoritative ;) So I trust these organizations' conclusions more than I trust yours. No offense to chemical engineers. They can certainly play a role in coming up with solutions. And no, the increase has not been a constant 2ppm / year: FWIW, I don't think we're all going to die, but I think the impacts are and will be real. Some populations will be hit very hard, and it could lead to world wide economic and political instability. I don't think anyone can tell you what the exact consequences will be and what concentration of CO2 will lead to those consequences. But, the potential consequences are serious enough that we should be doing something about it. Not every idea is a good one and I don't think that a run of the mill politician is going to have a complete grasp of the issue. I agree with you there. But politicians should be listening to scientists more than to the fossil fuel industry. Back in the late 90's did businesses and governments know exactly what the potential outcomes of the Y2K bug might be? No. But they knew they could be really bad, so they took action and spent billions of dollars address the problem.

When the best scientists are saying that human caused climate change is a real and is exacerbating the problems with wildfires, wouldn't it be malfeasance, incompetence, and ignorance for the politicians and the bureaucrats not to do anything about it? If you're not going to listen to the scientists who are you going to listen to? Again, I'm not saying that these wildfires are exclusively caused by climate change, but the hot weather clearly makes things much worse.

I agree with Joe. A good place to start with medium format is a TLR. The mechanisms are relatively simple. Like Joe, I'm not a fan of the ergonomics and eventually sold my Yashica. But as an entry into the world of medium format, it did the job well enough to get me hooked.

Sure, it depends on what you mean by equivalent. I think what JDMvW meant by equivalent is that the darkroom was where corrective/creative measures were taken to enhance images taken on film. With digital images that kind of work is done with software, - photoshop. Simple example. "Dodging and Burning" is a process people will use in photoshop to selectively darken or lighten parts of an image. But the terminology comes from the darkroom technique for doing the same thing.

I would second Orsetto on making sure the mirror is clean. If you've only tried NikonScan so far, a dirty mirror might be responsible for the less than stellar scans. Also Kodachrome and Digital ICE (scratch removal) don't often get along. So if your slides are Kodachrome you'll probably get better results with ICE turned off. NikonScan is what I settled on after playing with VueScan for awhile, but I don't ask it to do very much. I crop, I set the curves (white and black points), and turn on ICE if the film is compatible. I always use 4000 ppi and have it "4x overscan" scan in fine mode. Fine mode may not be necessary with the 9000 and 4x is probably overkill but it's what I do. Then finally I have it set to save images as tiffs not jpgs. If the slides seem really faded or color shifted, it might be worth turning ROC on. I virtually never use it. Any other kind of processing an image might need (white balance, exposure, etc) I perform using modern image editing software. I know you'd rather avoid using photoshop or something like it to individually improve the scans. In my experience though, you will get better results. That doesn't mean you have to use photoshop on every scan. Pick the ones you're going to use for your book first, then cleanup those. Like you I use an old G5 for scanning. I utilize folder actions to automatically copy the scans to a newer Mac and import them into the "scans" folder in my photo library. It works pretty slick. I suppose you could even have it text or send an email notification when the scans are done but I haven't gone that far yet. One thing I didn't like about VueScan is that it didn't take advantage of the thumbnail functionality of the scanner. Instead you had to wait for previews. Thumbnails in NikonScan show up pretty fast. Then I preview the frames I want, make the minor adjustments for each one, then batch scan them.

Slide film is more expensive to buy and more complex/expensive to process. It's also requires more precision in exposure settings and is relatively slow. I don't know that there is any 400 ISO slide film available that is actually new. If the end product is an image to be shared on-line, is there any real reason to choose slide film? Still, I would have expected pictures taken with slide film would have been more "serious" as well. What might be happening in some cases is that the E6 images that show up on Instagram are more the result of experimentation than people who are dedicated slide film shooters. Take me for example. I find C-41 pretty easy to process at home. In some ways easier than B&W. E-6 sounds more complicated but not THAT much more. Seems like just another couple of steps. So, I consider myself to be "E-6 curious". There's a few slide film rolls I've picked up along with some other film purchases I've made. They're expired and sitting in my fridge, - including a roll that I shot two years ago. I've been tempted to get a couple of new rolls along with an E-6 processing kit just to try it out. The thing is I'm pretty anti-Facebook and I've only posted a few images to Instagram (Nikonos Project). If I were to try shooting slide film, I'd want to get an old slide projector and see them on a big screen.

Oops. I was wondering where it went the first time I posted it. :oops:

Affordable digital cameras exceed the image quality of 35mm film cameras by most measures. I realize that the definition of "affordable" varies, but if you add in the cost of film and processing, digital is going to be cheaper. It's probably also true of the smaller medium formats, - again depending on one's definition of affordable. I think a digital camera that can match the quality of a 6 X 9 negative is still going to cost you a bundle, but maybe I'm wrong. Still there are people like me who for various reasons enjoy using film and film cameras. It might be nostalgia. It might be the process of using film. It could be the film "look" or any number of other reasons. Part of the film resurgence though is just fad and that will fade. It might reappear some time in the future or it may not. For that reason I expect that in the long run film camera costs will drop. There will be some that will always be sought after. But some of the more pedestrian cameras that have recently enjoyed an uptick in interest will see their prices fall.

Almost all of my lenses were under $50. Haven't found a reason to use this Vivitar Close Focusing 75-205 1:3.8 yet but I saw it in a thrift store and couldn't pass it up.

Not this weekend exactly but Christmas Eve, - planning on going skiing. Since the Fujica folder I have doesn't fit in my ski jacket pocket very well, I picked up one of those security holsters meant for carrying passports, wallets, etc. It should also keep the camera next to my body and a little warmer. We'll see how it works on the slopes. :)

Unlikely. I think if someone were interested in camera repair as a vocation and wanted to take classes, their best bet would be to get some background in electronics. That is a common element in modern cameras. It would be almost impossible to set up a meaningful and consistent series of classes on repairing classic cameras unless you stuck to a relatively small number of cameras where replacement parts are readily available. And even if you could manage that, finding enough students to make it worthwhile would be even harder. How many people can realistically earn a living repairing classic cameras? There's probably more than enough broken and unwanted Canon AE-1s that if you collected them for a few years, you could teach a bunch people how to repair them. But how many of those students could turn around and charge more than $150 to repair an AE-1 when there are all kinds of working bodies out there that can be purchased for that? About 20 cameras have gone through my hands in the last couple of years. I look for ones with minor issues. I fix them up and keep them if I really like them or turn around and sell them for a little profit. I make about enough to fund my film hobby, but that's about it.

In other words a fast computer with lots of RAM is kind of wasted on a 32 bit version of photoshop anyway. If you really want to run a 32 bit version of photoshop on Apple hardware you can stick to Mojave or do it on a virtual machine, - which is kind of how Windows 10 runs 32 bit apps.

Apple is much more aggressive about weening out old technology from both their OS and their hardware. The advantages are a simpler and more reliable operating system and it forces developers to modernize their apps. The downside is that if you're buying new Apple hardware, eventually your old software and hardware will no longer work. That still takes a long time though. They give plenty of warning and generally there are typically workarounds. The 32 bit app support in Windows 10 is limited and a big reason for moving to 64 bit in the first place is to allow applications to use larger chunks of RAM. And photoshop really likes RAM.

If it requires a bag, then very rarely. I've been very intentional about choosing compact cameras over the last couple of years. It's been a long time since I took the Canon DSLR anywhere. I do carry an Olympus XA around a lot of the time, - it's a compact range finder. It might go in a pocket or in the backpack I bike commute with. Last Summer I purchased a Fujica GS645, - a semi-modern folding MF camera. The hope was that I could slip that into a coat pocket at least. It hasn't quite worked out because it needs a pretty large coat pocket. I haven't given up on it quite yet, I might try it in one of those security holsters people use for passports and wallets. Don't see doing that very often though. It will also fit in the side pocket of my backpack but it's not a cold weather camera, - and its cold here this time of year. ;) The digital camera that gets a lot of use is an old Olympus XZ-2. Not a ton of megapixels but it has a fast zoom lens, an articulating LCD panel, and all the manual options you could want. It also has an accessory tele-conversion lens that's actually pretty good. The camera can fit in my pants pocket though it's more chunky than I'd like for that. Though it may not meet your criteria, a smart phone is with me almost always. It's water resistant and takes pretty good pictures as long as the subject is nearby. Eventually a small mirrorless camera with a pancake lens might work pretty well for me as a replacement for the XZ-2.